I've been so busy between work, the upcoming holidays and
other things that I haven't had time to update the diary,
but finally, here it is:

We finally received our robot kits, parts and other
software and we have already had 3 meetings. At our first
meeting, we didn't have any of the kits, parts or software
so I had to improvise using my own materials. For the
other two meetings we were able to work normally.

I would say that the children are pretty excited and they
are a good group. After the first meeting, we decided to
extend the meeting time from 1 hour to 1.5 hours. This
will give us more time to work and try things out.

By the end of the second meeting (after we received our
parts), the children had made their first robots and
would've had them running all over the place except we
didn't have our batteries yet. All in good time I guess.

By the end of the third meeting, we had received our
batteries and we had programmed one of the robots to
actually do something like travel in a square - mastering
motor control and timers. We are using the basic tankbot
design because it is easy to build and travels fairly
slowly.

In meeting four, we are going to take a look at sensors -
touch, light and rotation. Once we master those things
then the fun stuff will really begin. The children will
be turned loose to create a robot of their own design and
programming in order to solve a class-defined problem.

The children came up with some pretty interesting problems
and I look forward to seeing their solutions. We are
going to divide up into teams of 2 or 3 and go to work.
This program is so successful that the school has decided
to offer a robotics class as a special class during normal
school hours. I will need help from another parent or
teacher when that happens though because this is not a
paid position and I need to keep paying my bills.

Yesterday, I did my robotics club presentation and passed
out the permission slips for the seventh and eighth grade
children. The presentation looked good (my wife even did
a custom logo for the club) and went very smoothly with
good audience participation. The question and answer
period brought up some very interesting questions and
there was quite a bit of excitement. Of course there is
always someone who asks "Can I build a robot to clean my
room?" I was just like that a long time ago, but now I am
working towards building robots for minimizing handicaps
for people with disabilities.

The school really played up the "must" be there for every
meeting and I think that scared off some of the fence-
sitters and people involved in after school sports from
wanting to join. I can understand their point of view
though as I am the only volunteer and the meetings are
subject to my schedule. Sports programs have a regular
schedule. I am looking for adult volunteers
to join the club so that we can begin to have regularly
scheduled meetings. Anyone interested? Any sponsors out
there so that we can expand the program?

We still have room in the class so we are going to open it
up to the fifth and sixth grades. That may represent a
bit of a challenge if there is a gap in the maturity
level, but if it does we can always break the teams up
according to age. Opening this up to the younger children
also means that I will have another one of my children in
the club.

Our theme for the year is the same one as the First Lego
League which is "No Limits" (basically building robots to
remove limits placed on people with disabilities.) Some
of the children got really excited about that but what
really surprised me was one of the teachers. The teacher
asked me about robotic vision and was hoping that we would
have one project along those lines. It turns out that
that teacher has a relative that has impaired vision and
would like to know more about ways to mitigate that
handicap.

Tomorrow is our first club meeting and it should be really
interesting because of a continuous string of mess-ups
from the Lego educational division. We still don't have
our equipment yet and while they promised to send it
overnight, I don't have much hope that it will arrive. I
live in a real remote area and overnight shipping really
means two-day shipping. Oh well, I will have to use my
personal equipment for the class.

OK, I met with the principal and we have the final go-
ahead for the club. We are going to introduce the program
to the seventh and eighth graders on Nov. 30 and have our
first meeting on Dec. 2.

We will be meeting every Thursday for about an hour to get
started. After we get going, I'm going to suggest that we
meet every Tues. and Thurs. for an hour.
If it turns out that we don't get enough interest in the
seventh and eighth grades, then we will open it up to the
sixth grade as well. We have enough equipment and support
for about 15 students.

Hopefully, after our first meeting, I will have some robot
related posts that I can add to this diary. I'm
particularly interested in the student responses because
this will open a new view of the sciences for them. We are
also going to be writing down observations and keeping a
journal.

Well, after a couple of weeks we finally received our
grant. We ordered the robot parts and software for the
robot club and have started working on the curriculum.
The last step is to meet with the principal and have him
OK the details. We will probably meet just once a week to
start.

If anybody else is interested in starting a robot club at
their school, I would be happy to share the information
that I have. I can also provide you with some pretty
compelling language for you to use in obtaining your
grant. There seems to be plenty of money out there for
worthwhile school programs so there is probably a grant in
your local area just waiting for someone to apply for it.